Their parents

Veronica's heart was racing as she made her way over to the rear of the ship.

Stepping into the mess hall she saw what her husband meant as her eyes spotted the black patches of metal and scarred clusters on the walls and floor.

"Allen! Allen are you there?"

"Yea hon, i'm here." her husband stepped out from around the bend of another entrance, his expression much more serious than before.

"What do we do? we need to report this."

"It'l be months before we can get back to another system." he said.

"What are you saying, that we should steal everything and leave it like nothing ever happened? Allen people are dead!"

"Someone is dead. One guy. The rest probably escaped in the pods, they're each equipped with a micro fusion reactor and a star drive, they're likely sending someone out right now."

"You don't know that."

"Look..."

"I cant believe what i'm hearing," she turned around, Disgusted at her husbands greed.

"Veronica, we cant afford to leave," he walked over and placed a gloved hand on her shoulder."The company wants the ship back at the end of the 3 month term. I was gonna set out far enough so they would have to give us more time to mine before we got back."

"What?" she turned and looked back at him in shock."But I thought you paid them the full amount."

"I did," he sighed and looked down."They're starting a new policy. Too many people like us have been pushing back payments so they're repossessing any families ship that was late more than 4 times."

"How? What are we going to do? Oh my god, where will we go? They wont accept our immigration status back to Earth!" tears welled up in her eyes.

"And we don't have to,"he slipped his arms around his wife's shoulders and pulled her in close.

"Listen," he spoke softly to her. "I can't promise you what we're doing is the right thing, I don't know if the crew made it back. But what I do know is that i'm not having our kids suffer on some toxic world so they can build a better life for some rich bastards a hundred years from now."

Tears rolled off veronica's face as she sniffled against her husbands shoulder.

"Your right," she looked up and wiped away her tears, "Ok. lets do it."